


Feedback Loop

by blythechild



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Car Accidents, F/M, Friendship/Love, Hurt/Comfort, Misunderstandings, Separations, Slow Burn, clueless, she's just not that into you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 08:24:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11482464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/pseuds/blythechild
Summary: He keeps asking the question as if the answer's going to change with repetition. Maybe Reid really is a robot after all...This is a work of fanfiction and as such I do not claim ownership over the characters herein. It was created as a personal amusement. This story is suitable for all readers.





	Feedback Loop

“Is this a date?”

He keeps asking it at the weirdest moments. So much so that she’s revisiting her theory that he might be a robot experiencing a glitchy feedback loop. He first asks it when she’s making eyes at Mick Rawson. It seems like professional concern then, not the robot thing.

“It’s not a date. We’re on a case together. That’s all.”

“Oh, okay. Just checking.”

Then he asks when she shows up at his place and whisks him off to a pod people film festival (he fails to notice the irony).

“Not a date. Just Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” she confirms.

“ ‘Kay.”

Next, she gets blown up and she celebrates surviving by taking everyone to dinner. Except she forgets to invite everyone but him.

“Not a date,” she waves a fork load of greasy fries at him before he can get the question out. He blinks, looks confused. Maybe he hadn’t planned on asking this time…

“Uh, sure. Fine.”

Then she dances with him at J.J.’s wedding just before she leaves for London. This time he doesn’t ask – just assumes.

“Not a date,” he smiles sadly like he knows she’s going to leave even before she does.

In the years she’s gone, sometimes he initiates random IM conversations with a cheeky _‘Got time to talk? Not a date.’_ He’s getting better at humor but not with irony.

When she comes home again, he takes her to dinner and in the process of asking assures her that ‘it’s not a date’ because, well, she’s _actually dating_ someone even if he’s on another continent. He seems a little concerned that she understand his benign motivations this time.

Then he goes to prison for far too long and it takes forever for her to free him. When he comes back to work, twitchier and darker than before, she drags him out to a bar and is impressed by how much booze he pounds back.

“Still not a date?” he asks, squinting at her over his pint glass.

“No. Why?”

“Because if it’s pity, I wish you hadn’t asked in the first place.”

“It’s not pity,” she says, thinking maybe it is and then wanting to kick herself for it. “If anyone asks, you could call it a date. If, you know, that helps.”

He laughs at her but it isn’t a funny laugh. “It only helps if it’s real. Pity’s the obvious answer here. No offense.”

“Is that why you keep asking?” Her mouth goes dry and she tells herself she’s just had too much wine.

“I keep asking because I don’t know. I never seem to figure this stuff out.”

Maybe he’s not the only one. Maybe she’s in a shit-stupid loop of her own.

Months later some asshole they’re chasing rams their SUV, flips it over a guard rail and down into a ravine. She can hear her team on the roadway above, shooting, but all she gives a damn about are his scarred hands on her yanking her free of the twisted metal before the whole thing blows up. Just an average Wednesday at the office. They collapse back into the weeds as the van burns just feet away from them in the dry ravine bed. He’s singed and bloody, panting with his eyes closed like he’s just finished a marathon. His arm is sort of oddly clamped around her shoulder. Even though she’s battered, bloody, aching, and concussed, she feels safe now. It’s ludicrous, and the van lets her know that as fire makes a tire explode noisily. She grabs the ruined FBI logo half-ripped from his Kevlar vest and tugs it until he peers down his chest at her.

“THIS is a date,” she wheezes. He goes glitchy on her again as he does a triple-take.

“It absolutely is not,” he coughs when he finally sorts it all out. “Terrible suggestion. Worse than pity.”

She blinks and tries to figure out where she went wrong with that. And then he follows it up with, “But tonight is a different story. Provided we survive the afternoon, that is.” He makes a valid point; she can still hear gunshots in the distance.

He closes his eyes and lays back into the weeds again, a weird little smirk on his lips. “Whaddya know… figured it out…”


End file.
